Jericho and the Planet of the Apes: Why 2J?

I know I’ve mentioned it countless times over the years, but I am a huge fan of Chris Jericho.

And not just because he emailed me once saying he made fun of the Hardys when I posted the Jynx Brothers induction.

No, it’s because I think, when given free reign to do whatever he wants, he is one of the best talkers I’ve seen in wrestling, just a notch below the likes of the Rock, Ric Flair, and Steve Austin. In fact, I will go so far as to say his stuff way back in WCW when he was feuding with Dean Malenko may have led to some of my favorite promos of all time. The interview in which he claimed that while Malenko knew 1,000 holds, he actually knew1,004, then proceeded to unveil an accordion stack of paper and began to recite them?

Stuff of legend.

It always pains me to take one of my favorites to task on this here website, but alas, even the best sometimes fall flat on their face. Steve Austin was lambasted on here for the Redneck Challenge. Ric Flair was in an insane asylum. The most recent induction before this one featured Mick Foley and the freakin’ Rock for crying outloud. And how many times has the Undertaker appeared on here? 15, 20?

It happens.

And I’m sure it doesn’t help when you are feuding with…

…yeah.

I know a lot of people ’round these parts love ol’ Nipple H. They think she’s hot as best I can tell. That’s cool, that’s fine, different strokes, yadda yadda.

Some people get turned on zapping their nads with a cattle prod.

It’s a weird world we live in.

SPEAKING OF weird worlds…let’s now segue to the Planet of the Apes.

And yes, I promise you, there is a tie in between Stephanie McMahon and chimpanzees.

In fact, look at that picture above, she does somewhat resemble a baboon.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Planet of the Apes. You know, guys in monkey suits and Charleton Heston yelling about “Damn dirty apes” and all that jazz.

According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia (you know, the one that declared me dead three times), the first movie came out in 1968, and was followed by no less than four sequels, a “reimagining” courtesy of Tim Burton (read: take original material, make it darker yet somehow simultaneously goofier, insert Danny Elman soundtrack, sit back, make millions), and the latest epic, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which has not only gotten really good reviews, but was the number one movie in all of America this past week.

Now let’s think about this for a second.

The latest movie grossed over $50,000,000 in two days.

Over the course of its history, the series has grossed over a quarter of a BILLION dollars.

Seriously, WTF?

Who goes and sees all these monkey movies?

Yeah, I don’t know either, dude.

(Let’s make it FOUR inductions in a row for our new unofficial mascot.)

No doubt you are asking what the hell any of this has to do with wrestling. Please, dear reader, I ask your patience. We’ll get there.

And to do so, let’s head back to 2001, a time in which Chris Jericho spent all his time talking about what a slut Stephanie McMahon is.

Sounds like a good time, right?

You’re right – it was.

For about two weeks.

But we got approximately 63 straight months of it, and man did it ever get old.

The biggest issue was that every single exchange was exactly the same.

Stephanie would come out looking pleased with herself, and start babbling on about how great she and/or Hunter was.

This would lead Jericho to interrupt and start hurling insults about her nasty vertical bacon sandwich. These statements would then elicit one of three (yes, count ’em, three) facial reactions from Steph:

1. Disgust

2. Sadness

3. Constipation

And at the end, we always got Jericho hitting her with his pet name: “Filthy, dirty, disgusting, brutal, bottom-feeding, trashbag HO.”

After a while, it just got old, and was in dire need of something to change things up.

Yeah, you know...the WrestleCrap guy. Been here since before day 1, I have. You can hang out with me on Facebook. (I'm on there quite a bit) or follow my exploits on Twitter (I'm on there not quite so often).
Thanks, and Keep on Crappin'!